


good bones

by mardisoir



Series: Crush!verse [3]
Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-19
Updated: 2017-11-16
Packaged: 2019-02-03 09:50:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12745917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mardisoir/pseuds/mardisoir
Summary: The first words out of Claquesous’ mouth are: “Don’t freak out,” which is number three on the list of things Gueulemer never wants to hear him say again, preceded only by “I’m hit,” and “The cops are here.”





	good bones

The first words out of Claquesous’ mouth are: “Don’t freak out,” which is number three on the list of things Gueulemer never wants to hear him say again, preceded only by “I’m hit,” and “The cops are here.”

Numbers four and five on the list are: “Montparnasse is cooking tonight,” and “Your mother is on the phone.”

It’s a long list for a guy who doesn’t really talk much.

The next thing he says is: “You’re good with kids, right?” which leads Gueulemer to believe that the baby sitting on Claquesous’ lap is not, sadly, some kind of sick, previously dormant, domestic-kink induced hallucination.

“Sous,” he says, coming into the apartment and shutting the door behind him. “Tell me the truth. Did you steal that baby?”

“Why the fuck would I steal a baby?” Claquesous asks, affronted, bouncing the baby awkwardly on his knee.

The baby is small and pink and fretful looking, with big dark eyes and a few curls of dark hair. It’s not crying, yet, but Claquesous is holding it like an explosive device with a timer he didn’t set.

Gueulemer puts his shopping down on the coffee table and takes a seat. The baby stuffs its pudgy (tiny, so tiny) fingers in its mouth and drools at him.

“Where did you get the baby, Sous?” Gueulemer asks in a very careful voice.

“Why are you talking like that, you freak? I found it.”

“You found it.”

“Yeah,” he frowns, fussing with one of the baby’s (tiny, tiny) socks that’s almost slipping off. “In an alley. I thought it was a dog or something, at first. Heard this weird noise. Someone just left it there.” Claquesous looks more upset about this than Gueulemer is prepared to deal with right now.

On second glance, the baby looks kind of grubby. Its baby-grow thing is too short around the wrists and ankles, and there’s a dark stain down the front of it. Also, he’s no expert, but it looks too thin in the face. Baby’s are usually chubby, right? But this one looks all drawn and sad. It’s distressing. So is the way it hasn’t cried even once, despite being in a strange place surrounded by strange people.

“We shouldn’t call it ‘it’,” he says, instead of addressing all of that. “Preferred pronouns aside, it’s kind of dehumanising.”

“I don’t fucking know what it is,” Claquesous hisses, the whites of his eyes showing just a little too much as the baby hiccoughs and pitches itself backwards against his stomach. “All babies look like fleshy little doughballs to me.”

The baby seems unfazed by this (fairly accurate) summary of its personhood. It stares up at Gueulemer with its gigantic baby eyes. A string of spit falls onto Claquesous’ jeans. Gueulemer resolves not to mention it.

“So- uh. What. What are you gonna do with it?”

Claquesous shrugs, hands wrapped tentatively around the baby’s middle. “I have no fucking idea. I figured you might know what to do.”

Gueulemer blinks at him, “Why the fuck would I know what to do with a feral street baby?”

Claquesous snorts. “Feral. Shut up. You have a big family, don’t you? You take it for a bit.”

He thrusts the baby at Gueulemer, who is not proud of how violently he recoils. “That doesn’t mean I know what to do with babies! What the fuck. You brought it home, it’s your responsibility.”

“It’s not a puppy, Gue.”

“Yeah, I can see that, thanks.”

“Well what am I supposed to do with it?” the baby starts squirming, making quiet, uncomfortable sounds. Claquesous grimaces and scooches it around so it’s tucked against his shoulder.

“We could call Babet?”

“Right, because her track record with adopting random children is so great.”

Gueulemer winces. “Maybe let’s not tell Parnasse you found an abandoned baby,” he says.

“No shit.”

A door opens elsewhere in the apartment and Gueulemer and Claquesous stare at each other, caught.

“Fuck.”

“What’s all the noise about,” Bizarro asks, stumbling into the room in her underwear and one of Gueulemer’s t-shirts, hair half flattened, half sticking up with sleep. She scowls at them, “I’m working tonight, you better have a good reason for-” she trails off, eyes fixed on the baby.

“Hey, Zarbi,” Claquesous starts, in an entreating tone.

“Nope,” Bizarro takes a full step back away from the couch. “No. Absolutely not.”

“Biz-” Gueulemer tries, but-

“What part of ‘nope’ do you people not understand? I want no part in this,” she points wildly at Claquesous. “Take your abducted infant elsewhere.”

“I didn’t kidnap the baby, for fuck’s sake.”

“Well, whatever you’re doing. Babysitting, writing ransom notes, I don’t care. You’re not doing it here.”

She turns and marches into the kitchen, in search of coffee or something stronger.

The baby snuffles against Claquesous’ neck. He’s petting its back nervously, like it’s a cat. It seems to like it.

“Was there a note?” Gueulemer asks, looking around to see if he hadn’t spotted it in the face of the miniature human being in his home. “Do we know its name?”

“No, there wasn’t a note. It’s not Harry Potter,” Claquesous rolls his eyes. “It was in a cardboard box. There was a blanket, but it was gross so I left it. I don’t think whoever dumped it there was the kind of parent who’d spring for monogrammed bedclothes.”

Gueulemer doesn’t let himself think about how long the baby might have been there before Claquesous found it. Or what might have happened if he hadn’t.

“Do you think it’s warm enough?” he leans across the table to feel the baby’s (tiny) feet. “Shit, that’s important right? What if it has hypothermia or something?”

Claquesous pales. “Christ, don’t say that. How do we tell?”

Gueulemer delicately brushes the back of one finger against the baby’s cheek, “It doesn’t feel cold?” It feels impossibly soft and slightly sticky.

“Hold this,” before he can protest again, Claquesous deposits the baby in his arms. “I’m gonna google it.”

The baby is a terrifyingly fragile bundle of limbs and it is very, very small. Gueulemer has never been so conscious of the strength in his hands, the damage he’s done with them. It shifts in his cautious grip, arms flailing, and he remembers something his oldest sister had said once, that babies don't like feeling unstable. Gueulemer holds the baby firmly but gently against his chest, heedless of spittle, and tucks two fingers down the back of its onesie against its neck.

“I don't think it’s too cold. What else does it say?”

“Tiredness, confusion, slurred speech,” Claquesous reads, “that’s really just so incredibly helpful.”

Gueulemer lifts the baby up in front of his face, “Are you hypothermic, motek?”

The baby burbles something incomprehensible.

“I don’t think that counts as an answer either way,” Bizarro says from the doorway, clutching a cereal bowl full of coffee. “Please remove the child from the premises before I summon the goblin king.”

“Your will is as strong as hers,” Gueulemer promises, in what he hopes is a reassuring, child-friendly voice, “and your kingdom as great-”   
  
The baby smiles gummily at him.

“Holy shit. Do you think it understood me?”

“I think you’re both idiots,” Bizarro says. “Claquesous, put the phone away before you faint.”

“Jaundice,” Claquesous mutters, scrolling franticly, “croup, measles, do you think it’s been vaccinated? Fuck, what about chickenpox? Do kids get scarlet fever any more?”

“Sous,” Gueulemer says, turning the baby around so it’s facing him, “Sous, look, it’s smiling!”

“Maybe if you return it to where you found it, the mother will come back.”

“That only works with deer, Zarbi,” Claquesous snaps. “No one ditches a kid in an alley for safe keeping.”

“What about Bambi?” Gueulemer asks, distracted by the way the baby is chewing on his hoody string, tiny fist wrapped tightly around one of his fingers.

“You’re not naming it Bambi,” Claquesous says with murder in his eyes.

“You shouldn’t name it anything at all, it’ll just make it harder to give it up.”

It’s the first thing Bizarro’s said with any kind of seriousness and it jolts them out of the moment.

“Seriously,” she adds, in between slurps of coffee, “if you’re not going to ding-dong-ditch it at a police station, at least go buy it some food and clothes and shit. There’s nothing in our fridge except vodka and leftover kofta, and this place is not child-proof.”

Gueulemer looks around at the overflowing ashtray on the coffee table, next to the bag of shopping which contains beer, olives, and a carefully disguised box of ammunition he’d picked up from Homère–Hogu.

“She may have a point.”

“Alright,” Claquesous looks resigned-but-resolved in a way he usually only does when facing down a firefight. “Let’s go shopping.”

**Author's Note:**

> Title from [Good Bones by Maggie Smith.](http://reachingforpicchu.files.wordpress.com/2016/06/clljpvnweaeuixk.jpg?w=529)


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